our kindred and clan.
It’s a hollow threat. All of us, long ago, lost those who were close to us. We respond with our counter-offer. One more day in which to provide the ransom, or Lena will be killed.
A day passes.
We vidphone Alby and relay the news. We see him sitting with Lena. She is looking particularly beautiful. Alby turns to her and explains: the Cheo will not pay. He would rather, Alby tells her, see you die than pay a ransom.
Lena laughs. A gutsy laugh. “That’s my boy,” she says.
Alby swirls over her. It’s almost affectionate in its delicacy. Then he swirls away.
Lena is on fire. She screams and screams in agony. She falls to the floor and rolls around, trying to extinguish herself. Her bones char, her skin melts. She dies in utterest agony.
We relay the vidphone call to the Cheo. The kidnap is over. The hostage has been killed.
Lena, his beloved mother, is dead.
Book 4
Excerpts from the thought diary of Lena Smith, 2004 It was a dream come true for me.
To be a concert pianist, and play at Carnegie Hall.
When the day arrived, I couldn’t believe it was really happening. Or that I deserved such an amazing honour. And admittedly, I did have to pay for the hall myself. But it was by no means a vanity concert. I was a brilliant pianist by this point, and I’d earned the right to be there, for my first major public recital.
I didn’t sleep at all the night before. I woke early, hungry but unable to eat. I slept in the afternoon, showered, changed, arrived two hours early at the Hall. It was a Friday. I wore black. No, blue. A figure-hugging outfit. Arms bare. No jewellery. My hair was – up? Down? Must have been up. It was hot. I sweated under my armpits, I had to rinse myself with cotton pads in the loo. And I – no, no, that wasn’t then. That was another time. No matter. It was a cold night, in fact. I wore a dress with sleeves. But it was blue. Definitely. Blue.
The press clamoured to interview me beforehand, but I refused all offers. I stayed in my dressing room and focused my chi. I watched an episode of an American comedy on my PDV. Then when I felt ready, I began the long walk from dressing room to stage. Then across the stage to the grand piano. To the piano stool. Then I sat. Then a casual glance at the audience – which almost unnerved me. But I kept my composure. The crowd was hushed. The lights burned my skin. I looked at the keys. Blanked my mind. A cough shattered the calm. I ignored it. Composed myself. Then I began to play…
And in the millimillimillisecond between my hands getting the signal from my brain and the first note of music, I thought to myself: Not bad, Lena. Not at all bad. For someone who had always been tone-deaf, and hopeless at music.
It used to piss me off, to be honest,. At school, I could get As in all my subjects, my creative writing was fine, I was shit at gym but that didn’t matter. But I always loved the idea of being a great musician, and yet it never happened for me. I failed Grade 1 clarinet, and then failed Grade 1 flute, and finally failed Grade 1 cello, having failed to master how to pick up a bow. I was clumsy, that was the problem, and uncoordinated, and I couldn’t remember melodies, and I had difficulty telling one note from another. At a school concert I was in the chorus of our production of Les Miserables, and was told to mime because my singing was sapping the resolve and eroding the pitch of the angry mob.
But years later, after the success of my second book, I was looking for new challenges. So I decided that for my third book, The Many Talents of You, God, I would explore the whole area of teaching and instinct. And so as my research project I applied myself to the mastery of a whole series of athletic activities like tennis, tae kwon do, and sharp-shooting. And, for good measure, I decided to be a concert pianist too.
The research period took far longer than I expected – nearly four decades in fact – but I was rich by then and I was mainly doing this for my own satisfaction. And, through the application of science, and a steadily growing insight into the power of relaxation techniques, I managed to train my body to be “instinctive’. I learned how to move without thinking about it; learned to step outside of my body and let the body itself control me. And, because my fitness level never declined, I was able to make slow, steady progress towards excellence in all those related spheres. By the time I was sixty, I was a black belt fourth dan in tae kwon do and judo. By the time I was seventy, I was as good a tennis player as a gifted individual would be at the age of fifteen. Almost, but not quite, good enough to play at Wimbledon.
In music, too, I trained myself to achieve that instinctive, visceral grasp of musicality which is possessed by ten-year-old musical prodigies. And what I proved through all this hard work is that what the naturally gifted have as their birthright, the rest of us can learn. It just takes time, and practice, and a body that doesn’t decay with age but instead grows sharper, and stronger, and fitter.
I played six hours a day some days. I sang along with my own music, badly at first, then rather well. I learned to count with my pulse. I learned to immerse myself, surrender myself. And, though my focus was on the classic repertoire, I practised jazz and blues and boogie-woogie and rock. I learned to be funky, I learned how to swing. And my musical memory became phenomenal; I knew literally thousands of pieces by heart.
And all the while, for the best part of forty years, I applied myself religiously to the task of general self- improvement. I embarked on a year-long Grand Tour of the entire world. I spent two years in Florence, a year in South America. I studied art and architecture, local customs, I made friends, I took lovers. I became fluent in seven languages.
During these years, I often spent two hours a day in the gym, but religiously observed a schedule of rest days to prevent overtraining. I had my knees replaced. I had my hip replaced. I had a hysterectomy to remove a fast- growing cancer, and had my womb replaced with a bioplastic alternative. I pioneered skin-replacement implants, and shed my entire skin like a snake and lived for three months in intensive care looking like a cadaver. But the skin grew back, as youthful as a twenty-year-old’s.
I had the most joyful time imaginable. And yet, for all this, despite experiencing statistically more moments of pleasure than any other person so far in the history of humanity, there were times when I became bored. And, indeed, on the brink of clinical depression.
Why? Because I was lonely, I suppose. And envious. Every time I met a young man or young woman I yearned to have what they took for granted; sheer, naive ignorance of the nasty, spiteful awfulness of life. I yearned to be natural, unselfconscious, at peace with the world and myself. And I was convinced, too, that other people found me boring. Even though I was, by now, beautiful and gifted, I still looked at myself in the mirror and saw that strange shadowy creature: “It’s Only Me”.
It’s Only
Me.
How could this be! Why wasn’t I happy?
I was haunted by a fear of death and, absurdly, its aftermath. My fear was: when I do, eventually, die, how will I be remembered? And how soon would I be forgotten? I hugged to myself the idea that those closest to me would never get over my death, and would live barren empty lives from that point on. But I knew, in reality, that my passing would be greeted with a wave of relief, even from those who loved me. Thank heavens she’s dead, my friends would all think, and I’m still alive.
So I resolved not to die. Just to spite those fuckers. I continued to keep fit, and I continued my rejuvenation treatments. I wasn’t, of course, the only person to be embarking on a systematic course of anti-ageing therapy. All over the world, people were getting older, and looking younger. The film star Sheryl Martinez was, at seventy-four, relaunching her career as a singer. Over several decades, her reedy voice had, with the help of surgery, evolved into a sexy husky growl, which she had modified with extensive training into one of the all-time-great soul voices. And she was hot, the poster girl for the over-seventies rejuves.
And…
I play the first chord. The music ripples through the hall. Joy suffuses my being as the piano reveals its soul and I play, and I play, and I play, and…
And then there was the Billionaires’ Club – a group of 490 men and women who had devoted themselves to
